Rachel Waldrop

Rachel Waldrop (née Reese) is Director and Curator of the Athenaeum and the Dodd Galleries at the University of Georgia (UGA) since 2025. In her role, Waldrop works with university leadership, departmental leaders, staff, and the Lamar Dodd School of Art faculty colleagues to develop and guide the vision for a contemporary art exhibitions program at UGA under the framework of two distinct facilities in two areas of campus. As the Director and Curator of the Athenaeum, Waldrop organizes and coordinates the innovative and engaging exhibitions and installations brought to the university platform through commissions with new artists, new scholarship produced on their art practices, and by managing associated project budgets in a non-collecting campus venue located in downtown Athens. Waldrop additionally teaches MFA students as faculty for the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

From 2020-2025, Waldrop was Director and Curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga (UTC), formed on campus under her leadership. The ICA Chattanooga was the first ICA in the state of TN, and since opening to the public in 2021, Waldrop led the ICA’s branding and strategic planning along with its ambitious exhibition schedule including solo exhibitions, among others, with Ilana Harris-Babou (2021), Terry Adkins (2021), Kristine Potter (2022), Jamie Isenstein (2022), Stacy Kranitz (2023), Kevin McNamee-Tweed (2023), Becky Suss (2024), and Adam Parker Smith (2024) along with associated acquisitions and new scholarship including course curricula.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Waldrop drove the future vision for the ICA at UTC, advocating for and solidifying its reputation as a destination for contemporary art in Tennessee, including adopting a new strategic plan in 2024 and the implementation of a new campus public sculpture program in 2021. In addition, Waldrop stewarded the management and growth of UTCs permanent collection of fine art and augmented the collection by over 310 works of art in her tenure. With UTC Advancement, she assisted in cultivating new and current collectors and donors, driving development and public relations, and fostering new relationships both within the Chattanooga community and on the international art scene. In Chattanooga, Waldrop served as Chair of the Public Art Commission for the City of Chattanooga from 2020-2023.

From 2015-2019, Waldrop was Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Telfair Museums in Savannah, GA—the oldest public institution in the South, AAM accredited, with an annual visitorship of 250k—where she led an ambitious and award-winning curatorial and temporary exhibition program, guided and refined interpretation around the permanent collection of modern and contemporary art and advocated for collection augmentation, and was a curatorial department leader and interdepartmental team builder.

At Telfair’s Jepson Center (est. 2006, architect: Moshe Safdie), Waldrop stewarded the permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, including the Kirk Varnedoe Collection, as well as organized over 20 temporary and special exhibitions in the Jepson Center with associated acquisitions, that garnered multiple awards and myriad press. Select solo exhibitions include Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades (2019), Erin Johnson (2018), Carrie Mae Weems (2018), Paul Stephen Benjamin (2018), William Wegman (2017), Triple Candie (2017), Nick Cave (2016), and a group exhibition titled Generation (2017) with Iraqi-Canadian artists Sawsan AlSaraf, Sundus Abdul Hadi and Tamara Abdul Hadi. Waldrop also stewarded a reinterpretation of Telfair’s modern and contemporary permanent collection titled Complex Uncertainties: Artists in Postwar America (2016-2021).

Waldrop held prior positions at Atlanta Contemporary in Atlanta; Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia; and Deitch Projects, Petzel Gallery and Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York where she managed multi-million dollar gallery balance sheets. As an arts writer, Waldrop was the former editor of BURNAWAY magazine, and her writing and artist interviews appear in BOMB Daily, Temporary Art Review, TWELV Magazine, and ART PAPERS, among others. From 2010-2015 she also published a free newsprint of artists’ writings called POSSIBLE PRESS working with over 100 international artists. She has taught Critical Issues contemporary art courses at PAFA in Philadelphia and Georgia State University in Atlanta, and currently teaches in the Art Dept and Honors College at UTC. Waldrop frequently guest curates, juries and lectures for nonprofit arts organizations nationally, and was the former Chair of Public Art Chattanooga. Waldrop holds an MFA from City College New York (2009).

Recent publications include lead essay for Painter’s Refuge: A Way of Life on the work of Reginald Sylvester II (Pacific, New York), Notes for Tomorrow (Independent Curator’s Interntational, Pera Müzesi, Istanbul, Turkey), Suzanne Jackson: Five Decades (Telfair Museums, 2019), Howard Fonda: i and i, selected works 2007-2019 (2019), Ansley West Rivers: Seven Rivers (Telfair Museums, 2019), Radical Plastic (Cue Foundation, 2016), Jiha Moon: Double Welcome (Halsey Institute, 2016), Pratfall Tramps (Atlanta Contemporary, 2015). In the field, Waldrop serves as a passionate advocate for modern and contemporary art. She is frequently invited to contribute essays to artist and exhibition monographs. Waldrop has a reputation for collaborative partnerships, encouraging and supporting challenging new commissions, activating museum architecture, reinterpreting and growing collections—all emboldened through supporting artists living and working today.